


Glitter and Grimaces

by Gooberstein



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst and Humor, Coming Out, Copious amounts of glitter, He'll come out I swear on me mum, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Lactose Intolerant Jean, M/M, POV Jean Kirstein, Slow Build, Terrible job, That Bean Marco being a Bean, The chapters are going to be short but that means more frequent updates, The irony of Eren being Jean's boss, Trapped in the Closet, some sexual humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-30 03:14:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6406435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gooberstein/pseuds/Gooberstein
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Jean Kirschtein's dad gets arrested, he vows to change his life style and begin being true to himself, but that that might be harder than he thinks, especially after he meets Marco Bodt, the guy that keeps coming back to the craft store that Jean works at just to see him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Beginning of Change

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO PEOPLE THIS IS GOING TO BE ONE BUMPY RIDE I HOPE YOU'RE READY, THIS IS NARRATED BY JEAN ON HIS JOURNEY TO EMBRACING HIMSELF AND MARCO CAME TOO SOON IN THE HEALING PROCESS, BUT that definitely sped it up.
> 
> THANK YOU MARCO FOR BEING JEAN'S SEXUAL AWAKENING

         

           The blatant misconceptions I always had about love were solved that summer. I was pretty sure that fake it till you make it was the soul of chick flicks, marriages, dating and anything listed under the category of love. That’s how I always felt. In high school and in college I was popular, no doubt, as I was a star athlete for most of my school experience. I scored goals, dated cheerleaders, and was an all-around stupid jock. Except I wasn’t in an academic sense, I was top of the school, grad rank 6, under Eren Jaeger, a dumb fuck to say it in the nicest way possible. I was basically the guy that every other guy wanted to be, according to the vibe I put into society. My parents told me that people judge heavily on outward appearances and I’d never heard a more true statement. So I wore name brand shoes and basketball shorts and Nike t-shirts with those weird phrases on them just so I wouldn’t get bullied for wearing a scarf on a hot day or a wife beater on a cold day or hell a dinosaur onesie any day. I was supposed to be perfect. But I liked art, I liked scarves, I hated soccer, I hated how it made my chest burn when I ran too much and how I had to use my inhaler every time I got benched and I hated how I could feel everyone’s eyes on me like they were expecting me to actually be something, I didn’t want to have all these expectations. I could barely deal with my own expectations and those were to be this fake Jean Kirschtein. It wasn’t until my last year of college that I had an epiphany, I was majoring in business and I hated the subject, hated the teachers, and hated my parents for putting me in this mess. And then it happened, I was at home when the police arrived, there wasn’t much that I could remember except the microphones in my face the camera flashes and people screaming the word; embezzlement in my ear, and then after I had been ushered inside by my mother whom was in tears at that point. I put two and two together, Alexandre Kirschtein, my father, the one who was forcing me into the same career path he’d followed and also was the one that embezzled his company.

Embezzlement: The fraudulent conversion of another's property by a person who is in a position of trust, such as an agent or employee.

My father was put in charge of people’s money and used it on himself and my mother and me. He used other people’s money to pay for me, to pay for a degree that I had no appreciation for and now I appreciate it even less since he used other men’s money to pay for it; I appreciated even less after all the speeches on how “I needed to earn my keep around here if I was going to be a Kirschtein.” Was earning my keep stealing the money that others had worked so hard for and using it to pay for a nice house a nice car and a nice wife? When you put it like that I’d never realized how poor we really were. We had to be poor if he were stealing from someone who had less than us and used it to gain even more pointless wealth. Whatever happened to Robin Hood, what ever happened to stealing from the rich and giving to the poor? Now I guess you could say I resented my father for this, and I did so I moved out. Got myself a low paying job and a motor home with whatever funds I had left, and I promised myself that I’d start being an honest man. But it was harder than you could ever hope to imagine, it felt like it was impossible to let go of something that was ground into you by a person whom claimed to be your father. It felt wrong to let all of that go, but as my mom always said to me, “Baby steps.” So that’s what I did. That summer all my philosophies on love were changed by one person whom ultimately loved me more than I loved myself, that summer…that summer it felt like there would no longer be a cloud hanging over me. That summer was the summer that I found the other half of myself.

***


	2. Let it Ring

Ultimately, my life sucked, it sucked so hard that I was basically the janitor for a craft supply store that seemingly only made messes that involved large quantities of glitter, and being that so called janitor, I, had to clean it up.

Today was no different. 

The same thing happened every day, I rolled out of bed 10 minutes before I was suppose to leave, put on something that I'd layed out the night before, styled my hair (because god knows that if you don't style a hair cut that involves an undercut you're either going to look like a toddler that took scissors to thier hair,or someone who's blind and/or deaf and tried to be stylish), and left to get myself a soy milk caramal cappuccino, The joys of being lactose intolerant am I right? It makes you sound pretentious, like you're pulling up to Mcdonald's and you're sitting at the drive through menu, abd you lean over and there's this delay before you hear the nasaly voice of some high school sophomore, or the gruff voice of some 40 year old white woman who's been smoking since she was twelve, and they're all like: "What can I get'chya" because they're too lazy to say the 'get' and the 'you' seperately so you get this get'chya and you don't even know how they combined get and you to create this weird choppy sounding 'chya. And you're sitting there at the window like "I'd like an um.......uh........a big mac with no cheese and a large diet coke, with a large fry and a few sides of honey mustard, oh and throw in a couple of cookies too." And so you drive to the window to pay for your food and then you drive to the next to get your food and when they hand it out to you you check and see if all of it is there, and you have one or two fries while you're checking and once you have either gotten all of your food or made an optional pit stop in the restaurant. But otherwise you have your food right? And you start with your cookies, so you tae a bite and you're enjoying them until you realize the chocolate's melted and the entirety of the cookie is cold. So you shug it off and move to your burger and you realize they left the cheese on it. It's like they're saying: "No! You're not aloud to have no cheese it's SUPPOSEDLY good for your bones" You can't even absorb the calcium in cheese, especially AMERICAN CHEESE YOU THINK I DON'T KNOW THIS STUFF JUST BECAUSE I WORK AS A JANITOR FOR A CRAFT STORE!? WELL I DO!

Anyway, I may or may not have gone a little over board with that story, back to the task at hand, I was going to get myself some coffee, but that isn't really the interesting bit of the story, it gets interesting when I arrive that the store and my satanic warlock of a boss who insatiably has his head shoved so far up his as it makes me want to scream walks up to me and he has this dumb swagger in his walk, his 'significant other' looking all hot and bothered beside him, panting gallons of CO² and grasping at his forearm, like he was going to faint if the bigger asshole didn't have his way with him, and you know what the dick says? He says there's been another accident and you know what happens when he says there's been another accident I get to clean up glitter for the 1,000,000th time in the past week, and I'm about to scream, my fingers rake through my hair and my eyebrows are furrowed as I march my way down to the glitter isle with the shop vac that I hauled from the store room (janitors closet) and I get to work immediately not even thinking to put my stupid craft supply herpes covered apron on. And so I'm vacuuming for a while before I'm finally done and that's when this freckled fellow walks through the isle after I'd twisted the extention chord around my arm, so he comes up to me all timid, wearing this sweater vest with a gnome on it, he tugs at my jacket that I'm wearing like a four year old even though the guy is a couple inches taller than me and from the looks of it about the same age, so I look toward him and I can tell there's probably a horrific grimace on my face because I swear I saw him shink like a food before I finally said, "Good morning Sir, is there anything I can help you find?"

That's when he speaks. 

I'm pretty sure my ears orgasmed when I heard his voice, I mean I shouldn't have been too surprised when I heard it, it matched this guys build perfectly, except for the dumb haircut that he proudly sported, his voice was like:

Imagine your favorite cold dessert, it was sharp like the tingle you feel when you sink your teeth into icecream, but it was also warm like grandma's apple pie, and just as sweet.

"I'm looking for some turquoise glitter, I was hoping you guys would have some."

I wanted to cringe at the word but I nodded as if out of curiosity and decided to help him out. God was that a good idea.


	3. Mushrooms are Important to Me

"Uh, yeah, I bet we have some, and if we don't have any on the shelves then I probably vacuumed it up." I said woth a laugh, looking over to the shelves before looking back at him, his cheeks were graced with a warm vermilion blush, and I couldn't help but grin at him. instead of great him with my normal cold facade. "Here, lets check...." I said, once again diverting my gaze from his cheeks, which were absolutely caked in freckles, like one of those connect the dots for older kids and it was just- I have no words to describe it.

I thumbed through the different colors on the shelf, there was every color from black to mahogany glitter. And with my luck I couldn't find turquoise because my boss is too lazy to make sufficient sorting system. And I could just feel myself starting to sob internally at my lack of competence. So with that I started some simple conversation. "So uh.... what do you need the glitter for?" I asked chastely. He seemed a little shaken that I'd spoken, though he answered post haste. "I-I ooh....I'm working on a project for my art class." I looked over quirking an eyebrow at him. "Do you go to Washington University?" He nodded carefully before his smile broadened, how it got any widder was beyond me. "Yeah! One more year before I get my bachelors!" I pursed my lips. "For what?" He laced his fingers together, stretching his arms up and over his head. "I'm majoring in art and I'm also minoring in teaching and social studies, I'm dead set on becoming an art teacher, I'd love to expand young minds you know? Teach them that being creative isn't bad, and that they should embrace it."

If only someone would have told me that when I was in middle school and high school. But thanks to my rotten luck I didn't have mysterious, spunky, freckle man.

I sighed wistfully looking down at the glitter, "Man if only the entire world was filled with people of your caliber.....er...I didn't catch your name..." I exclaimed once again letting the other's face fill my gaze. "Oh, I'm Marco Bodt, It's a pleasure to meet you." I could have swarn his cheeks grew all the more red as he extended his left (?) hand to shake mine, I reached my left hand out as well to match his and shook it firmly, telling him my name as well, "Jean Kirschtein." He stopped shaking my hand for a moment, arching his brow at me. "Jean Kirschtein-where have I---wait, were you by any chance in my art class last year it was like....early in the morning Mr.....uh.....what was his name, Mr.Pixis! Yes, weird old guy, bald, eyes always closed, bushy mustache?" I took a moment to recollect my thoughts before I finally remembered. "No, that couldn't of been me, I was majoring in business, and my parents thought art was a waste of time when I could be taking forensics or criminal justice on the side, whatever, not my problem anymore. But you probably heard of me if we went to the same highschool, I mean I was the big captain of the soccer team." He explained, raising his hands up in the air, and giving them a light shake as if to portray pseudo-excitement. Marco laughed, and I couldn't help but appreciate how his chest heaved with every broken breath and how his eyes closed and crinkled at the sides when he opened his mouth and let his perfectly pink lips tense and curve into an open mouth smile, not to mention the melody that escaped his vocal chords and created this hypnotic array of notes that were sung by the most beautiful soft tenor in the world, I didn't think my stupid hand gesture was worthy of this sort of applause. Now that was a man that I could appreciate, I could appreciate a lot. But that same soft tenor invaded my garbled mess of thoughts with another sentence; "Nah, I don't think we could have come from the same highschool, unless you lived in Arizona."

Arizona? Well that explained the tan and the freckles, god knows you can't get freckles by sitting inside and avoiding the rain. I made an "oh!" shape with my mouth and looked back over to the shelf, my eyes locking on to the fucking turquoise glitter, so I grabbed that shit. "Yo! Look what I found!" I shouted, admittedly a little too loud. Marco made a small yay noise in response, "Here come with me I'll check you out." Marco snickered, "I wouldn't mind if you did." I looked at him an eyebrow raised "I hope you wouldn't mind, because, not to toot my own horn but, I'm great at checking people out." Marco snickered again before continuing normally (?) "Anyway, yeah, I should probably check out, my cousin Ymir said that she was going to take me out to meet some guys tonight, but I think I'm going to cancel on her because I found one that's just my type~" He then proceeded to wink at me. And in my head I was just like, aww yeah I totally scored myself a friend that's sweet! "Oh yeah? We'll, I could get down with that." So after I rang up his item and bagged it. He leaned over the counter and kissed my cheek swiftly, taking the glitter bag from my hands, before leaving. 

I reached a hand up to the cheek he'd kissed and pressed the tips of my fingers to it softly. 

I don't think he meant I was his type of friend. 


End file.
